The New York Times Magazine (print, 6/19/22) referred to a trans teenager whose treatment for gender dysmorphia helped establish protocols as “Patient Zero”—the same term used in an infamous New York Times article (10/7/87) that seemed to blame the AIDS epidemic on an individual gay man.
In a letter to New York Times leadership (2/15/23), more than 180 of the paper’s contributors (later swelling to more than 1,000) raised “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people.” What started as a conversation about a paper’s coverage exploded into a battle between media workers who see a problem at one of the most powerful media outlets on earth, and a media management that simply won’t listen.
“Some of us are trans, non-binary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record,” the letter declared:
Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest.
The letter was organized by the Freelance Solidarity Project, a part of the National Writers Union.
A similar letter from LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD (2/15/23) and over a hundred other LGBTQ groups and leaders made three demands (summarized in a press release):
- Stop printing biased anti-trans stories, immediately.
- Listen to trans people: hold a meeting with trans community leaders within two months.
- Hire at least four trans writers and editors within three months.
As FAIR (1/6/23) and many other progressive outlets and groups have noted, there is a campaign in state legislatures, in the courts, in the streets and in the media to roll back rights for transgender people, fomenting a moral panic about teachers and drag queens coming for America’s children. States like Florida are already banning certain types of medical care for trans people (Tampa Bay Times, 2/10/23), and other states have enacted similar laws (NBC, 2/14/23). States are even looking to restrict drag performances (Washington Post, 2/14/23).
This campaign is often portrayed as coming from the far right, which sees traditional gender roles under attack by a new world order. But liberal and centrist institutions like the New York Times aid and abet this campaign.
‘Patient zero’
Invoking the Times’ early homophobic response to the rise of the gay rights movement and the AIDS crisis, the letter writers argue that the paper has a responsibility to do better. The contributors’ letter cites an article (6/15/22) that
uncritically used the term “patient zero” to refer to a trans child seeking gender-affirming care, a phrase that vilifies transness as a disease to be feared.
The article quoted “multiple expert sources who have since expressed regret over their work’s misrepresentation.” (FAIR and the podcast Death Panel, among others, have detailed many other problems with the article).
The letter points to another piece (1/22/23) about children’s right to safely transition and policies about whether schools can or should withhold students’ gender transitions from their parents. The piece, the letter says, “fails to make clear that court cases brought by parents who want schools to out their trans children are part of a legal strategy pursued by anti-trans hate groups,” which have “identified trans people as an ‘existential threat to society’ and seek to replace the American public education system with Christian homeschooling,” noting that this is “key context” that was not provided to Times readers.
Liberal Currents ( 2/8/23): Gender-affirming treatments are “ubiquitous, safe, and provide hundreds of thousands of people with happier, more fulfilling lives every year”—and are noncontroversial, except when offered to trans youth.
The articles cited in the letter give the impression that we are living in a time of rushed, ill-informed transitions and shady treatments for children that lack oversight. As Samantha Hancox-Li wrote (Liberal Currents, 2/8/23), this is, in fact, the opposite of the truth, because cisgender minors have easier access to treatments they need than trans youth:
This is the reality of trans care in the United States: not children being rushed to experimental treatments, but explicit segregation, discrimination and the denial of basic care. When a trans kid wants to grow out her hair and change her name, it’s national news. When a cis kid wants to do the same thing, it’s Tuesday. When trans kids want hormone replacement therapy, we call it “gender-confirming treatments” and publish article after fretting article about how strange and dangerous they are. When cis kids receive medically identical prescriptions, it’s Tuesday. We don’t even have a name for it. Because what’s normal is invisible.
The question before us isn’t whether we should allow trans kids access to special experimental treatments. The question is whether we enable trans kids to access essential medical care on the same terms we allow cis kids to.
Gender-affirming care is critical because it has been shown to have enormous mental health benefits for trans youth, including reducing the risk of suicide (JAMA, 2/25/22; Scientific American, 5/12/22).
Misrepresenting facts
“Nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic,” the New York Times‘ Pamela Paul (2/16/23) insists–though as the Cut (2/16/23) points out, Rowling “simply doesn’t seem to believe that trans women really are women.”
The letter writers note that the coverage of trans issues has fed into the assault on trans rights at the state level. GLAAD said in its letter:
Every major medical association supports gender-affirming care as best-practices care that is safe and lifesaving and has widespread consensus in the medical and scientific communities. Yet the Times continues to churn out pieces that anti-trans extremists use to harm children and families. In November, the Times published a story that got the science of gender-affirming care so wrong that the WPATH had to write a multi-page tear-down explaining how the Times misrepresented the facts at every turn.
The letters’ examples are far from exhaustive. For instance, columnist Pamela Paul—once again, no relation—regularly uses the platform the Times gives her to spread misleading anti-trans narratives, as FAIR (12/16/22) has documented.
In perhaps the clearest display of out-of-touch-ness, the day after the letter went public, the Times published a column by Paul (2/16/23) defending author J.K. Rowling—who has immense literary fame and cultural power—from charges of transphobia, quoting one advocate saying Rowling “sees herself as standing up for the rights of a vulnerable group.” The vulnerable group here isn’t one of the world’s most marginalized minorities, but people like Rowling who want “spaces for biological women only.” Paul invoked the stabbing of Salman Rushdie in deeming criticism of Rowling “dangerous.”
Rowling has been an outspoken opponent of Scotland’s attempt to enact legislation to protect trans rights (BBC, 10/7/22), which was eventually blocked by the British prime minister (Guardian, 1/16/23). That defeat helped lead to the Scottish first minister’s resignation, which was celebrated by conservative British media (Economist, 2/15/23; Daily Mail, 2/15/23; London Times, 2/16/23).
In other words, Rowling isn’t just saying things trans people don’t like, she’s actively impeding social progress and helping to end the careers of politicians who offend the established order. Paul’s advocacy for Rowling is a reversal of journalism’s mission: She afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comfortable.
Pushed to the margins
The New York Times got some collegial support from the Onion (2/17/23): “Good journalism is about…asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions.”
Keep in mind, the contributors’ letter isn’t saying that certain viewpoints should be censored because they are offensive or right-wing. The push for the New York Times to keep a skeptical eye on the agenda of resisters of social progress isn’t censorship or anti-free speech. It is saying that trans issues have not been reported on accurately or fairly. That is a discussion that should happen more often in the mediasphere on a whole host of topics.
“It’s really a question of emphasis and resources,” FSP organizing committee member Eric Thurm told FAIR. “The pieces that take the ‘just asking questions’ approach are A1 cover stories, while others are pushed to the margins.”
There’s another important aspect of this letter: It comes from freelancers organized by the FSP, not staffers who have a regular paycheck or longevity at the paper. For freelancers, openly criticizing the editors of a major outlet is a real risk, because it might mean no more commissions in the future. This kind of precarity in journalism has long been denounced as cost-cutting—contractors are just cheaper and more expendable than NewsGuild-represented staff members—but it’s also a good way to enforce ideology at publications, because contractors have far less power to contradict their editors. By banding together publicly, these independent workers are challenging a very important tool corporate media use to manufacture consent.
Letter-signer Steven Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass and contributor to Scientific American, told FAIR that writers are confronting the “most influential newspaper in the English-speaking world about its trans coverage; it’s not above critique.” Such coverage is “an ungodly amount of pressure being put on such a small percentage of the population.”
Thrasher added, “It’s hard to dismiss this many writers, past and present.”
Declaring war on criticism
Hell Gate (2/17/23) on the journalists who questioned the New York Times‘ trans coverage: “To the Times, they’re now activists, which means their concerns don’t matter.”
Yet dismissing them is exactly what the paper’s leadership has done so far. The paper’s top editor, Joe Kahn, has essentially declared war against the letter—and its signatories. In a memo to staff (Hell Gate, 2/17/23), Kahn characterized the letter as a “protest letter” that “included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.” “Participation in such a campaign,” Kahn warned, “is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy.”
Kahn defended the paper’s work without acknowledging or addressing any of the letter’s specific claims, writing, “Our coverage of transgender issues, including the specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written.” He claimed that “any review” of the paper’s coverage “shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false,” without offering any evidence.
Kahn continued:
Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
The writers offered documented criticism, and Kahn dismissed it—prohibited it—as an attack and a protest organized by an outside group. Remember, these are people the Times clearly regards as worthy enough to write for the paper, but not worthy to have an honest discussion with about the paper’s biases. As Thurm said, the response doesn’t engage “substantively with the issues we’re raising.”
National reporter Michael Powell—author of one of the pieces criticized by the letter writers—likewise responded smugly (Twitter, 2/15/23), “Journalism is meant to ask difficult and discomforting questions, and to question institutions, including the medical establishment.” It’s a clever response, in which the real issues brought up in both the FSP and GLAAD letters are pushed aside and reframed as the Times courageously standing up to Big Medicine.
The paper (Mediate, 2/15/23) also publicly responded to the GLAAD letter, contrasting its own “independent reporting” with the “advocacy” goals of GLAAD. The response argued that the Times “strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society… Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it.”
‘A plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade’
Tom Scocca (Popula, 1/29/23): “The Times‘ gender-treatment coverage insists, through its sheer bulk and repetition, that there is something particularly wrong about the way young people who identify as trans are receiving care…. If the Times didn’t believe this, as an institution, the coverage would make no sense.”
The answer to this line of defense is in a piece cited in the letter itself, an essay by Tom Scocca in Popula (1/29/23):
In the past eight months, the Times has now published more than 15,000 words’ worth of front-page stories asking whether care and support for young trans people might be going too far or too fast…. This is pretty obviously—and yet not obviously enough—a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade. Month after month, story after story, the Times is pouring its attention and resources into the message that there is something seriously concerning about the way young people who identify as trans are receiving care…. The notion that trans youth present a looming problem is demonstrated to the reader by the sheer volume of coverage. If it’s not a problem, why else would it be in the paper?
But the Times can never engage in a discussion of why it’s obviously problematizing the issue, because it’s wedded to the fiction that the paper only ever reflects reality—and that its coverage does not shape that reality.
That helps explain why Kahn was so angry in his memo to the staff. You could almost hear him muttering the old War on Terror line, “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists.”
GLAAD (2/15/23) responded, “The Times is not only standing behind coverage that hundreds of leaders in journalism, media and LGBTQ advocacy are speaking out against, but boasting that they are proud of it.”
The paper has taken an “us versus them” attitude in its newsroom. The battle here is more than a debate over trans coverage, but a struggle between workers and media bosses over the narrative. Collective action for media reform, especially from many people with influence in the literary world, is more powerful than individual letters to the editor. And as the letter writers say, this isn’t just about how words appear on the page—the trans community and its allies see this as a necessary action in slowing down the growing assault on trans rights. Let’s hope to see more of this kind of action.
“The Times is on the defensive and the people advocating for trans rights are on the offensive,” Thrasher said. “That’s a good thing.”
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
Featured image: A collage of headlines on trans issues from the New York Times.
So it’s the Times, not trans activists, promoting an “‘us versus them’ attitude”? Along with the Times “obviously problematizing the issue” by not embracing the entirety of the program, as Mr. Paul and the letter’s signatories demand?
Still worse, a columnist dares to support JK Rowling, as the “clearest display of out-of-touch-ness” yet. And why’s that? Because the Times had already that immortal letter, tantamount to the burning bush! No instant repentance? For shame!
Are the tiny number of people, invariably employed in media or resident on Twitter, who embrace this program, the vanguard? — or just a disastrous regression into self-regarding identity politics, the world as viewed through the navel of my own unhappiness and discontent, which I attribute to race or gender or both. Or, perhaps worse still, the unhappiness I vicariously and virtuously experience on behalf of others until I too say the wrong word or have the wrong thought and they tell me I am banished?
What a disastrous byway in what passes for progressive politics.
Thank you for that accurate comment! While I support the right of trans people to chose their gender, it is mainly trans activists who are stifling debate and claiming that there is only one correct way to see things.
Ari, in all sincerity please consider that numerous transgender females and many of us staunch supporters of transgender individuals DO NOT ACCEPT the reductionist formula “TWAW – Trans Women ARE Women.”
Take the case of a noted British transgender woman, Debbie Hayton, a longtime campaigner for trans rights. Hayton very cogently replied to the question “What is a woman?” asked by The Telegraph UK editors in follow-on to their article of March 10, 2022 about the outrage over feminist Suzanne Moore, famous longstanding Guardian columnist, being driven from the Guardian because of her gender critical views deconstructing the folly of the postmodernist identitarians.
This is what Debbie Hayton, to reiterate, a transgender woman, had to say to the press:
“A woman is an adult human female, where female is characterised by genitals and gonads. That means that TRANSWOMEN LIKE ME ARE NOT WOMEN [emphasis added], but that’s OK. We do not need to pretend to be something we are not, and we do not need [UK Labour Party chair and biological female] Anneliese Dodds to pretend either.”
–Or anyone else “institutionally captured” in the language gaming by the militant wing of the trans lobby, so that now it has become impossible for them to usefully define “what is a woman” anymore.
Obviously, Debbie Hayton is implying more fully, against the ridiculous TWAW formula, “transwomen like me are not women, we are transwomen,” and transwomen per se are perfectly legitimate as such and deserving of ALL support and equal human rights, but subject to reasonable limits on their human rights so as to protect natal females from any possible danger arising from the presence of biologically male bodies within designated “female safe spaces.”
It’s this darned predicate “transwomen are women” (TWAW) that is causing all the problems, really grievous problems, as various media have documented when it comes to the rights of biological girls / women being taken away– such as the right to have a safe space and not be raped or otherwise abused within a women’s wing of a hospital, or in a battered-women’s safehouse, or in a locker-room, or in a jail or prison cell, or in athletic competition.
Please read for starters this op-ed by Debbie Hayton to learn more about the issue:
https://unherd.com/2020/02/the-labour-party-has-chosen-to-identify-as-unelectable/
*What Labour gets wrong about transwomen*
MPs are queuing up to sign a manifesto that denies the facts of biology
And of course there are numerous articles and now entire books by various sincere, deeply concerned mental health professionals and progressive citizens about the growing injustices being aimed at women feminists in the hate-filled crusade maintaining that “TWAW.”
And there is real concern, including among staunch trans rights advocates, over the growing danger of teens being psycho-socially “groomed” by peers (yes, it is a real phenomenon) into gender confusion and dysphoria, such that they are now undergoing Big Pharma’s puberty blockers and cross-gender hormone therapies THAT HAVE NOT BEEN PROVEN SAFE OVER THE LONG TERM. Crucial legal cases have arisen — likely to be followed by many more in the next few years– by now unhealthy and traumatized young adults claiming that not enough was done to keep themselves and other gender-confused young persons from bodily harm in this “rush to confirm” an altered gender identity.
So this entire topic needs to be carefully nuanced but i see only a very one-sided op-ed here by yourself, Ari.
“A woman is an adult human female, where female is characterised by genitals and gonads” is a sex-based argument, not one about gender. Most of the trans community would vehemently disagree with such an abject, science-free capitulation to biological determinism. Your clear contempt for transgender people cloaked under a veneer of ‘moderate reasonableness’ is there for all to see.
Rebecca, you presume far too much here. One of my teen twin grandsons has been on puberty blockers for over a year after reaching a crisis with gender dysphoria and is in process of transgendering to a female identity (probably will begin female hormone therapy this year). I totally love HER, and, as mentioned, i fully support trans rights– but within reason.
Feminist friends have fed me stories from around the world of crimes against biological women or “people with vaginas” (in the ludicrous anti-woman vocabulary now rampant) being committed by “persons with penises.” And these are being outrageously reported as “crimes by women against women.”
Rebecca, you really need to read up on how some of the leading militant voices of the aggressive transgender female movement are clearly, not persons who suffered from gender dysphoria, but rather that other kind of transwoman: autogynephiliacs who implicitly or explicitly resent and detest biological females, out of a feeling of deep-seated inferiority and anxiety over fear of never being able to become as fully “female” as a biological girl / woman.
For instance, please read this very informative and cogent essay by Helen Joyce: https://quillette.com/2021/09/07/the-truth-about-autogynephilia/
I have also been sent media materials by feminist friends with these transwomen autogynephiliacs saying the most disgustingly misogynistic things one could imagine about “what it is to be a woman” (e.g., giddy excitement in being violently penetrated by male organs). And some of these same obviously disturbed, unwell people have been at the forefront of the war against language and girls’/women’s rights in the total ideological capture that has occurred in the past several years!
Clearly this has gone entirely too far, when such a tiny, tiny militant group of angry (likely narcissistic) voices has an ugly axe to grind and behaves in tyrannical authoritarian ways, such as getting natal females incarcerated for trying to use the word “woman” and not some euphemism (“pregnant person,” “chest-feeder,” “uterus haver”) in certain situations.
That’s why many staunch progressives including myself are saying “This has gone too far” when women feminists are having death threats aimed at them, being fired from their jobs, jailed and fined, and socially marginalized for trying to preserve hard-won legal rights for biological females, starting with the right to have the word “woman” be something meaningful under the law.
Timothy,
Thank you for this cogent analysis and explanation.
What is frustrating in on-line spaces with Progressives, is that they have been captured by a tiny sliver of trans activism.
This is why they are “stunned” that so many “rational people” support what they see as “bigotry”.
It is important to note that articles like this one present 1 side of evidence: trans activists; as if there is not another side to the story. There is: it may be a fact for some teens that gender affirming care reduces mental health problems. However, on the overall, the data is muddied, at best: https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.1778correction
In addition, puberty blockers are not “benign” as presented by trans activists: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075
This doesn’t mean we should societally ban hormone or surgical care for trans youth and adults. Quite the contrary, in my opinion: we need to make the case for use crystal clear when applying them.
Pointing out that WPATH guidelines for medical transition and support aren’t being adequately followed at 7 out of 10 clinics in the US, doesn’t mean anyone is “anti-trans”.
Ari, for your further education on just a few aspects of this very fraught issue about transgendering etc., you need to read the following:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tavistock-child-gender-clinic-forced-to-close-over-safety-fears-2gfj325lt
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/07/rescuing-womens-rights-from-the-trap-of-identity-politics/
https://archive.ph/vLaYx#selection-1343.1-2877.339
https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-fictional-world-of-trans-activism/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/19/how-trans-ideology-took-over/
https://thecritic.co.uk/what-a-load-of-pants/
https://quillette.com/2021/09/07/the-truth-about-autogynephilia/
“Journalism is meant to ask difficult and discomforting questions, and to question institutions, including the medical establishment.” Michael Powell. You describe this as a smug response??
This is not smug at all. This is in fact the role of journalists in society. If you don’t want to ask difficult questions, you are in the wrong profession. You should go into marketing instead or propaganda.
The uncritical, lockstep support for trans ideology among liberal advocacy organizations and “journalists” causes actual harm to real young people under the guise of protecting transgender people.
Just as a reminder, “gender treatments” involve the surgical removal of breasts, penises, and uteruses. Forever. Often young ppl are urged to refashion their vaginas into penises taking skin from another part of the body or after penis removal have what remains fashioned into a vagina. Young ppl who go on, from unproven hormone blockers and hormones, to have surgery cannot have kids, cannot breast feed, often are unable to achieve orgasm, and have lifelong medical problems. Puberty blockers and hormones during puberty cause micro penis, thinning bones, heart issues, and diabetes.
But asking questions out of concern about the sudden and steep rise in gender dysphoria among teens, especially girls, and the “treatments” is transphobic, bigoted and denies the right of transgender ppl to exist. Really?
You should ask yourself this: What kind of moderately intelligent adult person would not ask questions about this sudden rise in gender dysphoric kids? What kind of empathetic, concerned person, truly concerned about kids, would not ask probing question about the evidence base of the” treatments”?
In the meantime, Sweden, the UK have made a u turn on gender care away from affirmative notions & towards a more cautious approach, and France’s chief medical association has warned doctors against medical transition because of the high rates of regret. The findings generally are that treatments and medications are poorly studied, that the true rates of detransition are not known because people often detransition seven and even ten years after transitioning. The research indicates rates of detransition may be as high as 25% and possibly higher.
All this information is available on-line. The Cass review is available on-line. The new guidelines in Sweden are available. Read the accounts on Reddit’s r/detrans of the kids who got caught up in the transgender fad that they were pushed into by adults.
Also, here is a super transphobic article published by Reuters with lots more information. because the publication decided to ask questions. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/
What’s most shocking, journalists and advocates live out their fantasy of protecting a vulnerable group, by delivering children and teens up to irreversible surgeries and drug treatments by not asking questions. This is unprecedented and speaks to the current cultural moment defined by professional who believe that to be a decent person is to uncritically adhere some social justice ideology or other.
Finally, by not asking questions and not listening to detransitioners, you presented the right with a whole set of issues on a platter. And now, liberals are aghast that the right is running on them. If liberals consider any debate, any interrogation, any questions unacceptable, they create an intellectual and policy vacuum that the right will move into and shape according to their designs. So you have only yourself to blame here for the rightwing backlash against. the LGBT community.
What a superb reply you’ve written here, Cassandra. I tried to post a second comment providing Ari and readers about 8 links to important things to read along these lines, but post has evidently been disallowed. Go figure….
I’m saving your words to a huge file i have discussing these things from various angles.
The “high rates of regret”? You’ll need evidence for that claim. Here’s some which you might not like so much:
“There is a paucity of data regarding transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people who “detransition,” or go back to living as their sex assigned at birth. This study examined reasons for past detransition among TGD people in the United States.
A total of 17,151 (61.9%) participants reported that they had ever pursued gender affirmation, broadly defined. Of these, 2242 (13.1%) reported a history of detransition. Of those who had detransitioned, 82.5% reported at least one external driving factor. Frequently endorsed external factors included pressure from family and societal stigma. History of detransition was associated with male sex assigned at birth, nonbinary gender identity, bisexual sexual orientation, and having a family unsupportive of one’s gender identity. A total of 15.9% of respondents reported at least one internal driving factor, including fluctuations in or uncertainty regarding gender identity.
Conclusion: Among TGD adults with a reported history of detransition, the vast majority reported that their detransition was driven by external pressures. Clinicians should be aware of these external pressures, how they may be modified, and the possibility that patients may once again seek gender affirmation in the future.”
Turban JL, Loo SS, Almazan AN, Keuroghlian AS. Factors Leading to “Detransition” Among Transgender and Gender Diverse People in the United States: A Mixed-Methods Analysis. LGBT Health. 2021 May-Jun;8(4):273-280. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2020.0437. Epub 2021 Mar 31. PMID: 33794108; PMCID: PMC8213007.
Twitter user ImWatson91, has written an extensive thread rebutting that study. She is a FtMtF detransitioner who is actively trying to get experts like Dr. Jack Turban to do better research and listen to real people, like herself, who have been harmed by gender medicine.
The paper is based on a self-selected internet survey that asked people with a trans identity to participate. Of course it did not capture the experiences of detransitioners like herself, who no longer consider themselves trans and think of their time as trans-identified as a horrible mistake — it did not ask them to participate in the survey.
American medical research is sketchy because the American medical system is sketchy. Consider the 18 year old woman who goes to Planned Parenthood and gets testosterone at the end of a one hour appointment. After a few months, she desists, and is a detransitioner. Never goes back to PP. In what medical record is this detransitioner noted or counted?
Better medical systems like Sweden, where everyone is part of one system, can do real research on medical outcomes of the treatments they are offering. It really would be best for young people if American doctors and caring adults would be willing to pay attention to research from overseas. As noted above, they are no longer following the affirmation-only model for gender questioning youth.
Agreed. This person Rebecca Turner never has credible sources, yet always criticizes poster’s to this site regarding their sources.
“Because the USTS exclusively surveyed people who currently identified as TGD, our study is restricted to the examination of detransition among people who subsequently identified as TGD.”
I was going to write up a longer analysis of this research, but why bother when it contains a choice line like that. So this study about people who de-transitioned is completely based on people who subsequently re-transitioned. I’m sure that doesn’t affect the data at all. Article is free online, anyone who wants can look it up.
Yo Critical,
Thought you’d like this one, it’s titled “Understanding Trans-Exclusionary Rhetoric in Philosophy with Help from J.K. Rowling,” and it can be found on the website dailynous (dot) com. This site seems to be a place where people can chime in as long as they are willing to push pause on heated vitriol or overly hyperbolic rhetoric….and if they’re willing to use their “real” name (whatever that means….lol.)
Hopefully you find it interesting.
I’ve watched most of Contrapoints major videos as well as the in a similar vein Philosophy Tube. I find them slickly produced, funny, and sharp-witted. I also find them to be incredibly condescending. There’s a lot of style but very little substance. You simply cannot level the term transphobia against anyone who disagrees with your position, that’s not a counterargument. I don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, does that make me anti-christian? I don’t believe that Allah exists. Does that make me Islamaphobic? I don’t believe in gender identity. Does that make me transphobic? Maybe. What exactly is the difference between disagreeing with someone and being a bigot? Some would say you become of bigot when you seek to exclude groups of people from civic life. I would agree. But there is a difference between excluding people and excluding ideas. I believe in the values of a secular society. Not because I think that religious beliefs should be protected from criticism, but because they are toxic to public discourse precisely because they have no substance. We have groups like GLAAD (and apparently FAIR) who want the core claims of transgender activists to be enshrined in secular discourse, needless to say, I remain unconvinced that such claims are valid. When I seek out empirical studies, like those referenced by Rebecca Turner, I find bad science. When I seek out philosophical ideas, like those from Contrapoints, I find complex but circular arguments. At the end of the day, it may just be that these ideas are wrong.
A couple of points:
You claim “You simply cannot level the term transphobia against anyone who disagrees with your position, that’s not a counterargument.”
While this cannot be ruled out it is also itself not the point in contention. No one is saying you are being transphobic did I say that? How about you kerp your utterances toward me grounded in the words I’ve written Ex-Lax?
To say that you cannot “level the term” transphobia at someone is itself a fallacious claim, since people do this all the time, it is a non-sequitur whether or not doing so is an argument, since no one has claimed it is.
In other words your assertions is nothing but an empty rhetorical claim based on a bald face assertion, nowhere in your claim do you make an argument either.
I’m starting to sense you do not have a high level of self-reflective capacity, for if you did you’d see how the side of this you are standing in is based on even less rational and reasonable arguments than the side that appeals to people’s privacy and the notion of humanity being an ongoing evolving process not some fixed object because sone idiot says so.
I’m in a hurry and making a few grammatical errors and what not – hopefully you can look past that and see what was posted – thanks.
“While this cannot be ruled out it is also itself not the point in contention. No one is saying you are being transphobic did I say that? How about you kerp your utterances toward me grounded in the words I’ve written Ex-Lax?”
I was talking about the “Understanding Trans-Exclusionary Rhetoric in Philosophy with Help from J.K. Rowling” post in which Contrapoints refers to JK Rowling as transphobic repeatedly. I’m sorry if you misunderstood.
“To say that you cannot “level the term” transphobia at someone is itself a fallacious claim, since people do this all the time, it is a non-sequitur whether or not doing so is an argument, since no one has claimed it is.”
Again, I’m referring to the Contrapoints video. The entire video is centered around Contrapoints critique several “transphobic” tweets from JK Rowling.
“In other words your assertions is nothing but an empty rhetorical claim based on a bald face assertion, nowhere in your claim do you make an argument either.”
Here’s the claim I was making. Gender Identity is unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiable claims should be excluded from public discourse. Therefore, you are not a bigot if you disregard claims about gender identity.
“I’m starting to sense you do not have a high level of self-reflective capacity, for if you did you’d see how the side of this you are standing in is based on even less rational and reasonable arguments than the side that appeals to people’s privacy and the notion of humanity being an ongoing evolving process not some fixed object because sone idiot says so.”
OK, but if you want me to change my mind, you need to engage my criticisms, not just call me an idiot.
Okay fair enough, I re-read through your comment again, and realized that you were most likely making those empty assertions about the video and what you took the subject in it to be saying. Even so, I still fail to see how anyone in the video alleged that labeling others as transphobia is a good argument, so you still did not explain anything in your claim…that mess aside, let’s talk about this other lapse in rational thinking that you once again circularly claimed (but seem to not realize how.)
You said –
“….Gender Identity is unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiable claims should be excluded from public discourse. Therefore, you are not a bigot if you disregard claims about gender identity.”
You are begging the question of falsifiability here in both the premise and conclusion of your argument. That’s known as a circular rhetorical statement, not an argument. You haven’t even broached solid reasoning yet, because you keep staying stuck on blanket absolutist thinking….truth is not an on/off switch critical reader truth is an ongoing unfolding precession of knowledge claims pressed up against the limits of knowability.
Stop and think about it for a second now; what is falsifiability? Is it a law written into nature? No, it is only a criterion we use in under certain controlled experimental conditions. Bro, Sis, or Other – go read the late essays and papers by Karl Popper, not just his mid-life crisis stuff.
Popper later walked back much of the positivist rhetoric he pushed, he warned scientists of taking falsifiability out of its context. He later tried to clarify that he considers falsifiability to be important but not a panacea. Falsification is only meant to be used for strictly scientific criterion – talking about gender is generally outside of the scientific purview, or outside of a strictly scientific context, but this does not mean we shouldn’t discuss it..
Just because something cannot be falsified does not make it untrue, unimportant, or off-limits to talk about, unless you are begging the question of falsifiability being something it is not.
Try to not make the mistake of taking a useful fiction that helps us under controlled laboratory conditions, to be some sort of law of nature.
In other words do not take falsifiability beyond what it is meant to be for (a legitimate criterion in science for observing the patterns of regularity of nature’s behavior)
To make the mistake of using falsifiability as something it is not meant to be means there are all kinds of phenomena – under your claim – that we would not be able to discuss, right? Falsifiability works only for the observable patterns of nature’s behavior, it cannot and should not be misused to demarcate every single thing under the Sun, sone things go beyond their behavioral appearances alone – love, justice, epistemology, ontology, linguistics, semantics, and cognition are all unfalsifiable too. Are we to not discuss these?
Said another way in case the above confused you: there are examples of unfalsifiable phenomena everywhere, two of them – love and justice – are subjects that most conscious human beings know of but can’t quite point directly to.
Love and justice are also unfalsifiable, so is liberty and freedom, but each of us who’s experienced these knows what they are when we experience them right?
Long story short (sorry about that) if we were to go by your claim and preclude public discussion of anything that cannot be falsified we have to toss out the scientific method and falsification too! No one has ever falsified our axiomatic knowledge that I am aware of….shall we exclude all axions from our public discourse too?
This is starting to wander into a dangerous place – is this your intention?
OK, so, if gender is outside of the scope of falsifiable discourse, should I be disregarding these scientific claims? If this was just a conversation about justice and love, I would be far more forgiving, but this movement is chocked full of clearly scientific claims. Why are we prescribing puberty blockers to children if “gender is generally outside of the scientific purview, or outside of a strictly scientific context”? All of this is inextricably bound to a medical system, there is no transgender movement without puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgery. It must be extremely convenient to support an ideology that can on the one hand make specific medical claims and then immediately revert to broad philosophical non-sense when anyone demands evidence. I assure you, demanding a rigorous falsifiable is not at dangerous as the alternative. I’m doubtful that skepticism ever led anyone to sterilize a child or castrate an adolescent.
There once was a doctor who claimed to expel demons from people’s bodies through lobotomy. When people asked the doctor for evidence that these demons existed he said, “Just look at my patients. They once screamed and shouted, but now they are calm and serene. What more evidence do you need?” Someone said to the doctor, “But maybe there never was a demon. Maybe you have just altered the patients’ brains which led to a change in their behavior. Shouldn’t you be careful diagnosing demons when your treatment could do more harm than good?” The Doctor said, “Truth is an ongoing unfolding precession of knowledge claims pressed up against the limits of knowability.”
Creepiest of all is that Congress nor State legislatures, neither has passed legislation that regulates a company’s usage of robotic or chatbot-generated commentary.
For all I know “critical reader” may be unable to pickup on the subtlety and nuance in human speech patterns because critical reader is a chatbot.
What plausible reason and rationale do we have to know for sure that who or who (or what) we are chatting with isn’t a robot? How to tell if the comments are from a living conscious human being?
Turns out that there are not very many good ways to filter out inanimate chatbots.
If everything online can virtually be copied and mimicked using technology, what does this mean about truth?
To Critical Reader,
You asked: “OK, so, if gender is outside of the scope of falsifiable discourse, should I be disregarding these scientific claims?”
Again, you are begging the question of what we mean by the words science, and falsifiability here. Ugh! Also, by asking that sort of question you are establishing what’s known in philosophy as a false dilemma. You are pretending that an ontological topic like gender is either inside of science or outside of science. Science is not a spatial temporal thing! It is a behavior we do, it isn’t something you can hold onto and pull out a tape measure to see how wide it is. Stop it with the sophistry please?
The problem here is that you are absurdly ignoring the ontic facts (all of the anti-trans proponents do this because it helps them bait their opponents into circular discussions – your circular dragnet here is unimpressive to me.)
You have to keep in mind what the ontological categories of entities are. Ontology and the topics it entails are broader in scope than science but can (and do) include what science we get if and when we chose to study the subjects entailed. If – as is the case – gender is about the ontological nature of what it is being, then we need to remember it is broader than science but can include the science we use to study it. Gender is real, but not falsifiable – fine – but guess what? So is love, justice, liberty, and freedom! You keep doing this and I’ll keep reminding you this isn’t an all or nothing subject, it is an unfolding one with many subtle and nuanced dynamisms. Okay?
Another thing, by having failed to distinguish the ontological factors here your thinking is starting to slip down a slope of absolutist, all-or-nothing, types of nihilistic reasoning.
I’m not here to convince you of the dangerous corrosive effect that such nihilism will have on your psychological disposition, but do know that our subconscious states of mind are still affecting us even if we are not directly aware of them doing so. Granted you are a conscious being – you should worry about this sort of thing.
There are things that we don’t know that we know, that do cause our body harm. In other words stuff like childhood trauma we have blocked out, that we are not meta cognitively aware of, yet are unknowingly eating away at our psyche. You can dismiss the science on this if you want, but it doesn’t change the evidence one bit just because you chose ignorance.
There are things that for psychical protective and coping reasons our mind can compartmentalize. This does not mean that those memories are not tearing us apart at the subconscious level just because we’ve stuffed them to cope with present day life, right?
There are empirical studies in a little known field of psychology called Depth Psychology, that I highly encourage you read anything you can get your eyes on. Especially the papers, essays, and articles that talk about the so-called “no report paradigm.”
Now, back to what we were talking about – “gender” When I said gender **generally** falls outside of the purview of science, this is not the same as saying that science cannot study it at all. This is not the same as saying that science cannot come to reasonable conclusions about gender, and it is certainly not to say that medicine can’t develop a methodological approach to treat and accommodate people who’s inner state of being hinges upon what we know vis-a-vis empirical science.
If people can be made more comfortable, and have a life worth living because of medical breakthroughs why shouldn’t we allow this? If meaning, happiness and a more peaceful existence is partially possible why should we not try to achieve these ends?
In other words love is also outside of the strict confines of the scientific method, does this mean we should not look at the neuro-correlates of conscious states entailed by a person’s loving behaviors? No. Nothing is off limits for science, unless you think only in terms of science being something it is not – a strictly laboratory activity whereby a bunch of numbers go in one end and truth comes out the other (reminds me of the super naive Willy Wonka computer.)
Science is not about coming up with truth claims, it is about coming up with knowledge claims. Philosophy and medicine to include psychiatry and psychology are fields of expertise we also use to try and get to the truth. Trying to get to the truth is never a closed book, and yes the science can be temporarily settled, but this also does not mean it cannot be improved, updated or overturned by future development okay?
Again, I appreciate your thoughtful (but at times nihilistic) posts. A lot of our contention here is not being helped by this medium of communication. I fully believe the majority of arguments that occur online are fed by the limits of online interaction, too much of what we use in real life to talk to each other gets lost here in the virtual sphere.
We always wind up either talking in circles or reading past each other, which I’m sure I’ve done with you. Anyways thanks again, I appreciate you Criticsl Reader.
“Again, you are begging the question of what we mean by the words science, and falsifiability here. Ugh! Also, by asking that sort of question you are establishing what’s known in philosophy as a false dilemma. You are pretending that an ontological topic like gender is either inside of science or outside of science. Science is not a spatial temporal thing! It is a behavior we do, it isn’t something you can hold onto and pull out a tape measure to see how wide it is.”
OK, yes, science is a behavior. It is a behavior with a goal. The goal of scientific discourse is the production of falsifiable claims which can be tested against reality. The goal of science is not to affirm love, or justice, or gender.
“Stop it with the sophistry please?”
You answer technical questions with philosophical babble and philosophical questions with technical certainty, you cast ad hominems as often as you do arguments, and you seem to have an affinity for didactic authority. I’m not sure your a paragon of Socractic ignorance. But wait, now you’ll probably accuse me now of an appeal to hypocrisy.
“The problem here is that you are absurdly ignoring the ontic facts (all of the anti-trans proponents do this because it helps them bait their opponents into circular discussions – your circular dragnet here is unimpressive to me.)”
Here’s an ontic fact for you, there are two phenotypical humans, those centered around the production of large gametes and those centered around the production of small gametes. It is an ontological fact which is so well understood that it has been assumed in every culture we know to have existed in the history of human civilization. It is self evident to nearly every man, woman and child. It is a fact so deeply ingrained in our biology that it extends beyond a popular culture, national culture, ancestral culture, ancient culture, civilized culture, pre-civilized culture, homo sapiens, and mammals. It stretches back a evolutionary millennia. If we begin with ontological presumption that the body precedes the mind, we can arrive at the much more helpful conclusion that gender is a set of cultural behaviors which change over time and place. In other words, it makes no sense to change someone’s gender by changing their body. You’re talking about ontological facts, but you are attempting to replace a lower order abstraction (sex) with a higher order abstraction (gender).
“There are things that we don’t know that we know, that do cause our body harm. In other words stuff like childhood trauma we have blocked out, that we are not meta cognitively aware of, yet are unknowingly eating away at our psyche. You can dismiss the science on this if you want, but it doesn’t change the evidence one bit just because you chose ignorance. There are things that for psychical protective and coping reasons our mind can compartmentalize. This does not mean that those memories are not tearing us apart at the subconscious level just because we’ve stuffed them to cope with present day life, right?”
OK, so, you believe in repressed memories, the scientific claptrap that created a social panic in the 90’s when psychotherapists claimed to be able to recover suppressed memories of abuse. I can’t say I’m surprised, the same type of faulty scientific reasoning which underlies repressed memories also underlies gender science, namely the refusal to recognize self-selection bias, publication bias, and lack of reproducibility.
“There are empirical studies in a little known field of psychology called Depth Psychology, that I highly encourage you read anything you can get your eyes on. Especially the papers, essays, and articles that talk about the so-called “no report paradigm.””
Yeah, “little known field of psychology” is never a good source of information. Science depends of replicability and psychology has become notorious for producing results that are highly idiosyncratic. This is exactly how we end up with gender science, people performing experiments on small, highly selected groups of people who desire a particularly outcome and then gradually expand the concept to cover greater numbers of people without ever realising they are tipping the scales. Followed by an unfounded social panic which further solidifies the public which leads to decades of misinformation. It’s a nightmare. When you try to confront people about it, they become non-sensical.
“This is not the same as saying that science cannot come to reasonable conclusions about gender, and it is certainly not to say that medicine can’t develop a methodological approach to treat and accommodate people who’s inner state of being hinges upon what we know vis-a-vis empirical science.”
If someone says, I feel like I have breast cancer, we don’t simply cut them open just because their inner state of being indicates it. The best science requires some sort of empirical test, we currently have no such empirical test for gender identity. Over time we can expect this to lead to concept creep and diagnostic inflation. We have seen this happen over time in lots of areas which are diagnosed based on “inner states of being.” For examples, increases in prescriptions for anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and pain medications. Gender medicine is an extremely dangerous example of this because it could lead to sterilization, castration, increased mortality, unnecessary surgery, etc.
“If people can be made more comfortable, and have a life worth living because of medical breakthroughs why shouldn’t we allow this? If meaning, happiness and a more peaceful existence is partially possible why should we not try to achieve these ends?”
You should get a job at Purdue selling oxycontin, I think you would really excel at it.
“Science is not about coming up with truth claims, it is about coming up with knowledge claims.”
Arguments aren’t about coming up with examples, they’re about coming up with illustrations!
“Trying to get to the truth is never a closed book, and yes the science can be temporarily settled, but this also does not mean it cannot be improved, updated or overturned by future development okay?”
GLAAD didn’t claim the science was temporarily settled. GLAAD claimed the science was full stop SETTLED.
The bottom line Critical reader is that none of us have access to every salient truth about this universe. You can keep pretending to stand on the higher ground here or you can come down off your soap box and admit it that when we come together and put aside our political differences that’s when society as a whole moves forward and changes for the better.
“You can keep pretending to stand on the higher ground here or you can come down off your soap box and admit it that when we come together and put aside our political differences that’s when society as a whole moves forward and changes for the better.”
The title of your post is literally “How Many Times Will It Take Until This Truth Penetrates Your Skull?” you ******* hypocrite.
Face it–gender transition has an extraordinarily high satisfaction rate. Most people who transition are happy with their decision, and you can’t accept that because it would mean the concept of gender you were raised with is factually incorrect, so you would have to grow up and change your mind. That’s all this is. None of you care about all the intersex children whose genitals were non-consensually mutilated by the medical establishment for decades to make them the “right” gender. Not one tear of yours has been shed for these innocent children who were surgically altered for life. None of you care even slightly for the confusion imposed upon intersex children and adults who were told they were “unnatural” for having natural body parts that simply didn’t conform to expectations. Enough of your white knight piety. No one buys it anymore.
Thanks for that, Djfhrui. The levels of venom, contempt and ignorance displayed in the comments thread on FAIR whenever transgender-, intersex- or non-binary-sympathetic articles appear are as bigoted as on far-right media. It is revealing to consider that this is surely by far the most-commented topic on this site.
Clearly, the gender of a tiny number of people is of much greater concern than, say, ensuring public accountability of the media corporations who, of course, peddle so much anti-trans hatred and disinformation which drives the hate.
Rebecca, please point out where there occurred any “venom” or “contempt” in either Cassandra’s or my comments. You see, it’s this inflammatory over-reaching rhetoric, yes, quite venomous and contemptuous, that is deeply concerning to those of us trying to have a compassionate, empathetic and sane discussion about these issues.
Respected trans advocates like psychologist Erica Anderson have clearly expressed their concerns that too many cases of gender dysphoria are being rushed into dangerous Big Pharma treatments (puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones, not to mention surgeries).
There’s a good reason that the UK’s NHS has shut down the Tavistock GIDS clinic and urged far more extensive, holistic care by NHS children’s hospitals for young people reporting gender dysphoria. As was reported in thetimes.co.uk, July 29, 2022:
“The NHS decided to close the clinic on the recommendation of Dr Hilary Cass, a paediatrician who is leading a review of the service. She wrote to health chiefs last week recommending an overhaul of treatment for trans children.
Cass said there were “critically important unanswered questions” in relation to puberty blockers, which the Tavistock has prescribed to children as young as ten.
She said that there were “uncertainties about the long-term outcome of medical intervention”, adding that brain development may be “temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers”.
She wrote: “We cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. To date, there has been very limited research on the short, medium or longer-term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development.”
Cass said there was a need to move away from a model of a single, centralised service owing to a surge in demand. She called for regional centres focused on child health, bringing together services in mental health, autism and hormone treatment. […]
Whistleblowers and campaigners have spent years raising the alarm about the Tavistock. Dr David Bell, a former staff governor at the clinic who in 2019 wrote an internal report that said it was “not fit for purpose” and which was suppressed, said the decision should have come sooner.”
It is not being venomous or contemptuous or ignorant to share these reports.
Many people who have DSDs, a suite of medical conditions sometimes called intersex, have asked to be left out of the trans conversation. They don’t have a gender identity, don’t want to be part of the rainbow flag.
I have long supported the DSD activists efforts for better medical care for these children and respect for their bodies, allowing them to grow up and make their own decisions about potential surgery. I also support an end to routine circumcision of male babies.
These are efforts to get better care from the medical system, to ask doctors to do a better job of respecting their young patients.
The two young women I know who have recently had elective double mastectomies (both younger than 20) had normal healthy female bodies. It is reasonable to ask if medical professionals are providing the best possible care when they are doing elective double mastectomies on healthy young women.
Your letter addressed to the attention of Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for standards at the New York Times signed (so far) by 4,496 signatories—the bottom of the letter invites anyone to click and add his, her or their name, so maybe this number will grow—seems to complain that there’s an “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people” and to implicitly intend for the Times, owned and staffed as it may be by intelligent, reasonable, humane people, to (1) now become aware of this bias and (2) do their best to eliminate it.
Continuing immediately in an effort to support its central complaint, the letter goes on to allow that while there are “plenty of [Times?] reporters [who] cover trans issues fairly,” “their work is eclipsed … by what one journalist [Tom Scocca] has calculated as over 15,000 words of front-page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.” I beg you to forgive me for being so dense, but what does the latter fact (if it is a fact) suggest about the bias or fairness of the Times coverage? And why is it “unfair” to debate “the propriety of medical care for trans children”? Does doing so all by itself mean that the Times’s editorial policy is biased and biased against trans people?
Reading on, my confusion deepens as the letter goes on to assert that “The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that reporters ‘preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias’ when cultivating their sources, remaining ‘sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance.’” But how could a reader of the Times, including the writer of this letter, know whether the paper’s reporters on this or any other topic are “cultivating their sources” “free of any whiff of bias”? And for clarification, whose bias is meant? The reporter’s or the source’s? And how am I as a reader of this letter to know what such “cultivation” might mean or entail? Moreover, what does the caution that those writers “remain ‘sensitive that personal relationships can erode(?) into favoritism, in fact or appearance [a truism, BTW]” have to do with establishing that the Times in fact manifests an “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people”?
It seems to me that the letter writer is obliged to establish that the paper actually exhibits this “editorial [anti-trans?] bias” first before going on to try to account for why it might have this bias, even if the cause may turn out in part to be traceable to their reporters’ failure to “cultivat[e] their sources” “free of any whiff of bias” and their failure to not let their “personal relationships with [those] news sources” result in “favoritism, in fact or appearance.”
But even when it presents an example or two which seem to be attempts to offer support to a secondary assertion intended to establish the Times’s “editorial bias,” I believe the letter comes up short. The letter says that “the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar (?) mix of pseudoscience (meaning, and e.g.?) and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.” It cites Emily Bazelon’s long article, “The Battle over Gender Therapy,” in the Times (June 22-24, 2023) for her use of the term “patient zero” as evidence, I suppose, of the use of “euphemistic, charged language“ that “vilifies transness as a disease to be feared.” Really? I, for one, am not someone who thinks the use of this term (“patient zero”) serves to “vilify transness as a disease,” though I don’t find it difficult to believe that others more sensitive and more immersed in the issue with which this letter deals could take it that way. If you read Bazelon’s entire article, the term (“patient zero”) was one which a Dutch psychologist, Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, seems to have used to identify a young person referred to her for treatment, a young person whom Cohen-Kettenis decided to be the first to treat with “puberty suppressant drugs” on the way to her establishing “a treatment protocol that proved revolutionary.” What other term would you use to refer to such a person? An “ur-patient”? This young person was, after all, seeking and accepting “treatment” from a doctor, so calling her a “patient” hardly seems objectionable nor does it seem to me a denigrating stretch to refer to her as “patient zero.” Would “patient one” have been preferable? Isn’t “ground zero” used to refer to the origin or “the point of the most severe damage or destruction” when disasters such as earthquakes, epidemics (including, maybe, COVID whose “ground zero” could have been the live food market or a virological research lab in Wuhan, China) and other such catastrophes happen? Does this use of “patient zero” imply that this new treatment protocol is treatment for the “disaster” of transitioning from male to female, or conversely, or that this first patient is the source of the “epidemic” of young people seeking help from the medical profession to facilitate or enable this transition? I suppose you could think so, but forgive me if I don’t or if I think most other people won’t either. What about the term “holocaust”? Or 9/11? Are 9/11 and death camp survivors justified in objecting to the use of either term as disrespectful or offensive when they are used to refer to other horrific events that seem similar or identical to the originals? Again, I for one don’t think so. And BTW, I would hope more telling examples of “euphemistic, charged language” (if that’s what this is) could be found and identified as such if not in Bazelon’s article then in other pieces appearing in the NY Times, assuming the writer of this letter wants to make this point and further to say that the Times’s use of this sort of language is support for the idea that the Times has a “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.”
Another citation of what one supposes the letter writer believes is another example of his (or her or their) complaint about the Times appears in Katie Baker’s recent feature “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know.” It would seem that Ms. Baker and the Times are being faulted because they don’t point out that those bringing court cases to compel “schools to out their trans children are part of a legal strategy pursued by anti-trans hate groups.” I’m guessing that this assertion is in support of the letter’s claim that the Times omits “relevant information about its sources in its reporting on trans children.” Baker does say that “conservative legal groups have filed a growing number of lawsuits against school districts, accusing them of failing to involve parents in their children’s education and mental health care.” But is this part of a “legal strategy”? Who says it is and where’s the evidence? But even if the filing of these lawsuits by these “conservative groups” is “part” of a legal strategy, one wonders what the goal of this strategy might be. To do what? To eradicate the civil rights of transgender people? Does this mean that such conservative groups are “anti-trans,” whatever that might exactly mean? Are they “hate groups”? I don’t know what sort of behavior would qualify calling them that, but filing the sort of lawsuits they seem to have filed doesn’t seem enough to support the charge. It is worth pointing out that it’s possible to object in principle to “rights” being asserted by groups who claim a special identity without necessarily being antagonists of specific groups that do so for specific reasons. And in any case, to say, as Baker does that “some [parents] have retained lawyers affiliated with the largest legal organization [law firm?] on the religious right to battle their children’s schools” does not mean that these parents are thereby card-carrying members of an “anti-trans hate group.” Baker also says that non-conservative “critics say groups like these [filing these lawsuits] have long worked to delegitimize public education.“ Is that the same as “seek[ing] to replace the American public education system with Christian homeschooling”? And anyway, who says that’s what these anti-trans hate groups are trying to do? It seems to me that these are legal disputes primarily about children and who should bear the primary responsibility for caring for them, at least until they become indistinguishable from adults.
And for Christ’s sake, how does all this bear on whether or not the NY Times has an “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people”???
I confess that I do not have a personal stake in this dispute with the Times. Yet I’m perfectly willing to believe that many of the articles about trans matters in the Times are poorly or misleadingly sourced, if they’re sourced at all—recall their performance on Russiagate—just as so many of their articles on other matters are, nor do I have any trouble whatever in believing that the writers of those articles, generally, reflect the attitudes and values of the owners and editors of the Times, and so have many, many predictable and obvious biases. But in examining particular cases of Times reporting on these issues that you claim reveal “editorial bias,” I don’t think your citing Michelle Goldberg’s recent op-ed as delivering “various expressions of polite skepticism or open hostility toward trans interests” nor do I think her main point in that piece is to “fret… about ‘progressive taboos around discussing some of the thornier issues involved in treating young people with gender dysphoria, including the reality of detransition, are self-defeating.’” First off, I don’t even understand what that phrase means. What “progressive taboos”? What “thorny issues”? Why “self-defeating”? I realize my beef here is more with Goldberg’s elliptical references which are certainly not the letter-writer’s fault, but I do not see what is so wrong with worrying about “how challenging and confusing it can be to deal with gender identity nowadays, … [and to note that it’s difficult to be] parents who worry that their child[ren]—swept up in a new climate of support and enthusiasm for transgender care—may do something irrevocable to their developing body and regret it later.” Nor do I understand why someone might think Goldberg or the Times is being anti-trans for saying so.
And finally, the letter writer saying “As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation” really leaves me almost speechless. I can’t quarrel with your asserting your disappointment, but really, “As thinkers”? Really? How about “as hypersensitive fault-finders”? Has the Times “followed the lead of far-right hate groups”? When and where? By doing what? Which groups? Has the Times presented “gender diversity as a new controversy”? Issues surrounding gender and gender identity and gender diversity (whatever that is) ARE controversial. The Times didn’t make them that way. And when and how did the Times suggest that “gender diversity warrant[s] new punitive legislation”? I completely agree that such legislation is a an affront to human dignity, but it does seem to me that the push to pass it is in part a consequence of the identity politics that transgender (and many other) groups demanding recognition as unique interest groups have spawned.
At all events, this letter is or should be, IMHO, an embarrassment and should be revised or withdrawn immediately to save what little face is left to save. Unless you care to demonstrate why I might be sadly mistaken about the “editorial bias in the [Times] reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.”
Does the author even read The NY Times.If he does I wonder how he can write this as still claim to be a serious journalist. TheTimes usually has at least two articles per month focusing on trans people and trans issues and almost everyone is biased towards the trans position on issues and shows them in a favorable light. Over the last year they’ve had two articles are trans women athletes, photo shoots of trans teen campers, a video of a trans man who gave birth and a recent article in which trans talk about their lives. They also until recently a trans columnist, Jennifer Finley Boylan, who often wrote about trans issues. Never did they show that there could be any issues with what they were writing. With the trans women athletes, they would describe how happy these people were,which is OK. But never was there an article about the biological woman that they played against, who lost out on scholarships, because they didn’t have the physical advantage of growing up male.
Even the articles this author is ranting against, we’re hardly transphobic. There’re real issues that Ned to be addressed regarding puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. Bone loss,loss of fertility and the ability to orgasm are just a few. Teens are not mature enough to make such life lasting decisions. As for parents not knowing about what going on in schools, the focus of another article, it mentions some of the issues but like the one about hormone use, it was hardly anti trans. Since when is it trans phobic or hateful just to question medical procedures or drugs. Also I find it ironic that the trans activists say that parents shouldn’t know if the child chooses not to tell, that it coukd be “unsafe”, as if all parents are going to harm their children or kick them out of the house. Yet if someone says that biological women, who have been sexually or physically abused by men,want a place just for themselves so they can feel safe, they are the ones accused of being transphobes. Even if the men still have their make genitals and have just self identified as a woman, these trans activist scream that these people have a right to be in women’s shelters and prisons.
Yes JK Rowling is a rich white woman, so I guess the death treats against her are Ok because she is a “transphobe” and a TERF. After all she had the audacity to want to protect vulnerable women. (Yes there are people more vulnerable than trans women). And she believes that biological sex is real. The hyperbole that she does t want trans people to exist is absurd. She just wants to acknowledge that trans women are not the same as biological women nor will they ever be. They’re not better or worse, They are different,
FAIR would do better attacking Ron DeSantis on trans issues that the NYT, JK Rowling, Martina Navratilova, and the like. DeSantis seized the microphone when GLAAD and its allies intimidated the progressive side of the debate into silence. The trans censors created a rhetorical vacuum that the fascists were only too happy to fill. Ari Paul, this is a problem of your making. Own it.
Couldn’t agree with this more. Uncritically supporting bad science and illogical positions only cedes ground to the right. Why give them a free talking point which will only give them a veneer of reason and capture more of the voting population? The trans issue is going to end up being the death knell of the modern progressive movement, an abandonment of rationality. FAIR needs to be calling this stuff out, not embracing it.
Every time that FAIR publishes a piece exposing hatred against transgender or non-binary people, the comments thread is soon populated with comments exposing their writers’ own hatred and bigotry against that tiny community and their astounding levels of ignorance about it. I suppose that it merely confirms the accuracy of FAIR’s commentary on this topic, as well as the absurdly misplaced anger that a few people feel towards people who just happen not to be cisgender.
The more you hate, the more we rise.
Rebecca Anytime Faif publishes an article about trans you post several comments accusing the writers of bigotry and hatred just because they don’t agree with you 100% or because they might question something regarding transgenderism. If someone questions the safety of puberty blockers and long term cross sex hormones, you claim that person is a transphobe. If someone mentions that destransitioning is real,you ignore the evidence that person uses and claims the person is a bigot. If someone questions the dangers posed to women prisoners and women in shelters by having to share space with trans men who still have their male genitals, you accuse me of being a bigot. The only one that matters is the trans woman. You obviously don’t care at all about the biological women who may have been abused physically and sexually by men and feel threatened sharing a space with a biological man who self identifies as a woman. You would just accuse them of being a hater or a transphobe. If anyone is a bigot or hater it is you, who thinks anything of everything you believe or think is absolutely the only way anyone has a right to believe, with no questions allowed.
Chris imagine if The New York Times had actually gotten off its ass and interviewed rank and file rail workers instead of only publishing corporate press releases, right?
The same problem you seem concerned with vis-a-vis labor and train wrecks, is entailed by and 100% logically isomorphic to what Ari Paul has written above. In other words you share the same exact essential concern as anyone at FAIR – the people are not being heard!
The article above was written not despite the voices of the voiceless not being included in The New York Times articles, but precisely because of this shortcoming of the so-called “Paper of Record.”
There is a difference between an opinion piece that only talks about people as if they were abstractions and an opinion piece that includes a direct statement from those people who the opinion piece is tentatively about.
Our mass media has gone into a tailspin, it can’t accept that it’s for-profit model is a race to the bottom. Profit over people is untenable….and is so in ways that does not create the most informed versions of ourselves. We’re getting news that has filtered through a thumbs up or thumbs down sort of “money making meter,” and not the news as it is in and of itself.
Saddest of all is that literally no one who showed up here to talk down about another group of people they do not understand, can seem to see how their vitriol, rhetoric, and empty opinionated commentary has vindicated Ari and the authors of the letter, not contradicted either in the least bit.
To the managers and editorial mucky mucks at the NYT do your job! Look at this shit: Do you see the kind of environment your mealymouthed milquetoast half-assed journalism foments? SMH
Once again “critical reader” you completely missed the point. I’ve noticed you do that a lot. Do you understand what it means o be self-reflective?
To Critical Reader,
Are people truly demanding you agree with them? Or are they only asking to be included in what gets published about their community? Demanding you agree and asking to be included are not the same. Do you understand there is a difference? This is what I’ve been driving at, and meant to ask you – thanks either way, whether anyone is able to convince you or not, thanks critical reader, I appreciate the effort you put into your comments don’t think I do not value this (I do.)
“Are people truly demanding you agree with them?”
Well, this is the wording of the text from the open letter from GLAAD referenced in this article.
“STOP: Stop printing biased anti-trans stories. Stop the anti-trans narratives immediately. Stop platforming anti-trans activists. Stop presenting anti-trans extremists as average Americans without an agenda. Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist and access medical care. Stop questioning best practice medical care. Stop questioning science that is SETTLED.”
My question (which apparently we shouldn’t be asking) is which science is SETTLED? From what I can tell, none of this science is settled. You need to understand we are about to move into a new era of this story. There will be lawsuits for malpractice, we’ve already seen it happen in the UK and Canada. When those malpractice suits happen in the US, we are going to need media coverage that is free to question these medical practices. We know that the medical industry has a history of over-prescribing, over-medicating, and under-informing. There’s reason to believe the same thing has been happening with gender medicine. We know there are detransitioners. If our media institutions (and watchdogs like FAIR) agree to these terms, they won’t be able to objectively cover these issues. That’s a serious problem.
No, this article about gender politics is not equivalent with subjects like the train disaster or Seymour Hersh’s article. Covering this subject does not magically cover all subjects.
That is not what I said Chris, I did not say “Covering this subject magically covers all subjects,” I said the mass media can do a better job covering the voices of the voiceless. To put words in my mouth that I didn’t say is like building then burning down a straw man, not only does it achieve nothing, the comment I did post still stands untouched by your assertions.
Go back and read what was said, I said the essential appeal that you are making is the same as what Ari Paul and the signatories of the letter are making. In Other Words: Both of you are talking about a shortfall in mass media of the coverage the mass media publishes of people’s voices, right?
Do you think The New York Times is part of the mass media?
You seem concerned with the voices of labor not being included in the media, Ari and the signatories of the letter are saying the same thing only Ari et. al. are saying it about the LGBTQ community.
Not saying you believe this, but the idea that we can’t talk about both labor rights and LGBTQ rights but have to choose one over the other, is bullshit – we can and should push for The New York Times to be a better steward of the Fourth Estate for all of us, not just it’s donor class rich readership.
Labor is always being marginalized in favor of a corporatist agenda, the elite leaders who run the show at The New York Times are not failing to live up to their corporatist agenda by ignoring labor. Same goes for how the elitist leaders of The New York Times leaves out whole swaths of people in its articles about sex and gender identity.
To say that both sides – rank and file union members and the LGBTQ community – share in a common grievance, neither implies nor means that both sides are 100% identical (even though I personally know a few transgender union folks), it simply means they have the same basic grievance, “an injury to one is an injury to all” type shit.
If this seems lost on you, it doesn’t matter – take it however you chose to see it. I can’t make you see something you refuse to see. Either way, the more you see that LGBTQ people and labor rights activist share in many common goals, the more you’ll see why rulers would rather have us fighting each other.
I am 100% confident you’ll eventually figure it out.
To Critical Reader,
Asking FAIR or it’s readership what is or is not settled science is weird. You’d be better off asking a doctor or scientist.
I’m going to tip my hat here, and bow out…..until we meet again, take care.
The only reason I am asking is because GLAAD claimed the science was settled and FAIR seemingly endorsed that claim. Unfortunately, after reading their coverage of gender medicine, I am doubtful I’ll ever wholly trust FAIR’s scientific reporting again. They’ve really dropped the ball on this issue. We’re going to have to wait for the cognitive dissonance to settle before we finally get some real coverage.
The New York Times started moving to the right; when the Clintons got into office in 1992.What was once a highly, respectable newspaper; has become like any other paper:good for nothing but wrapping Trout.
Poor Trout : (
Believe me, I’ve learned that leftists don’t think women’s safety, privacy, dignity, and fairness matter.
Leftists have failed to raise the minimum wage, failed to call out Biden for support of the fascist putsch in Ukraine in 2014, failed to prevent or halt the war in Ukraine, failed to reign in the military budget, failed to get any of America’s 750 military bases overseas closed.
Leftists have succeeded in inserting nonsensical gender ideology into schools at all levels, turned Women’s Studies into Gender Studies at all universities, destroyed fair single-sex sports for female athletes at all levels, and told modest women to stay home and no longer participate in certain aspects of community life if they are unwilling to share locker rooms with intact males. LGBTQ+ identity politics are where leftists are pushing forward relentlessly, so they must be top priority for the movement.
Unclear — putting it politely — what the writer means by “self determination”, but to try to answer, you absolutely have a right to determine that you’re black despite your white parents, race being a social construct, or that you’re a woman despite the body and genitals of a man.
Whether the rest of the world is obliged to grant you the rights, protections and privileges accorded to any select group to which you’ve determined you belong is a different question. Is that compliance granted upon demand in any other sphere of life by law or custom?
It seems to me that it is the trans community has declared war on criticism in their eyes your either with them unquestioningly or you’re a bigot. To think it was the new york times of all places to finally take a stand and question the left-wing narrative instead of quashing all dissent to it and in the eyes of the left so used to a media hegemony that is a death sentence.